


Life Like Hours on the Clock

by successsionhbo



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Graphic Depictions of Illness, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Past Abuse, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 22:40:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29848572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/successsionhbo/pseuds/successsionhbo
Summary: Going back to the motel covered in blood in the middle of the day was always an inconvenience.  There was always someone lurking outside the lobby, smoking a cigarette or kids running around the parking lot.S1 of SPN re-write, Dean-POV focused on Sam and Dean, eventually will be S1-4
Kudos: 2





	Life Like Hours on the Clock

**Author's Note:**

> i have only watched until season 4 and decided to make my own version- if ur super protective of hc and everything being in character, u might not like this <3 I think I will eventually change the chapters to pre-cas/ post-cas (so 2 instead of 4 chapters) but this is taking me a while to write. this isn't canon compliant, but the timeline for the most part is. ik not that many people will read this bc it doesnt have deancas (yet) so if u do and u like it if u leave a comment i will love u forever :))

Noon  
Going back to the motel covered in blood in the middle of the day was always an inconvenience. There was always someone lurking outside the lobby, smoking a cigarette or kids running around the parking lot. It was sweltering, and the heat made the feeling of blood on the back of his neck particularly uncomfortable, sticky with sweat and smelling more and more like copper by the minute. He could see the heat radiating off the pavement. 

He pulled the hood of his sweatshirt up and drove into the empty spot in front of his room, putting the car in park and shoving his knife and his fists into his pockets before rushing into the room and slamming the door behind him. His feet stumbled over one another and he hurried to the bathroom and turned on the shower. He dropped the knife into the sink and slowly shed his sweatshirt, gently peeling it away from the dark spot where he was steadily bleeding, pulling the ripped fabric out of the gashes in his side.

It’s not that bad, he told himself, ignoring the other voice in his head telling him to stop being stubborn and to go to the hospital. He was used to those duel voices in his head, one of them his and the other belonging to a brother he hadn’t seen in years. Dad wouldn’t go to the hospital, neither will I, he thought to himself. 

He used the knife to cut his tee shirt down the middle so he wouldn’t have to raise his arms and make the wound bleed more. He shed the rest of his clothes too, tossing them in the corner of the small bathroom. His hands were shaking from the effort of having taken off the ruined clothes and the claw marks were still oozing a stream of thick blood. He leaned heavily against the sink, red stains covering the white porcelain and looked at himself in the mirror. His hair was short and relatively clear of blood except for a small amount caked into the back of his head, his neck was covered almost completely on one side the black ink of his most recent protective sigil mingling with the dark, silky blood of the creature. HIs real problem started on his shoulder. It was almost purple, the bruise had come on fast and merciless and it was swelling to the size of a baseball. He flinched as he poked at it, remembering the bass-y thud sound that came from his being thrown against a concrete wall. It wasn’t broken, he knew that because he had broken almost every bone in his body and this was just bruised, bad and deep. His eyes trailed down his torso, going over the mess of raised scar tissue to see if there were any other cuts he had to worry about besides the big one.

The claws had shredded his skin, his flesh torn in between the individual claw marks like the thing had been trying to skin him. The pain went out in all directions and his blood was thicker than he wanted it to be, but there weren’t any dark clots or other unpleasant bodily matter that would indicate to him that an organ was punctured. His skin was clammy and pallid and his hands were shaking too much to ever thread a needle. 

“Damn,” he said to his reflection, already dreading what he knew what he was going to have to do. He opened the medicine cabinet and took out the small fabric case that held his limited first aid supplies. He had been holding a towel to the wound, encouraging it to form clots and stop bleeding with the pressure and he tossed that on top of his clothes. He took out the stapler from the kit and medical staples. He used the hand not holding the stapler to pull the damaged skin as taut as he could manage so the staples could have something to hold onto on both sides of the wound. He took a breath, shoved a washcloth in his mouth, and pressed down on the stapler. 

The pain was instant, sharp and clear. Nothing unbearable, but enough to make him grunt from adding pain onto an area that was already covered in it. The washcloth helped muffled him, and thank god, he thought, because the last thing he wanted was an angry neighbor banging on his door. Staples took less time than sutures, needed a steady hand less, so he was no stranger to them. He had a line of scars in the shape of them curving around his left calf and another, smaller one on the inside of his left wrist. But the pain of them was constant, didn’t let him forget that he was stapling his skin closed. When he finished he dropped the stapler into the sink and sank onto the floor, relishing in the feeling of the cold tile against his inflamed skin, a sheen of sweat over his whole body.

He let himself close his eyes for thirty seconds before remembering he never disinfected and belatedly grabbed a bottle of vodka from where he put it on the back of the toilet and gritted his teeth. He emptied half the bottle on his wound and took one, two, three gulps. The alcohol numbed the ache enough for him to crawl into the bottom of the shower and let the water hit his body, the cool mist welcome. He closed his eyes. His fingers traveled to his neck, pressing at the ring of faded bruises that rested there. A parting gift from his father, certainly too drunk to remember it. He pressed harder, forced himself to remember. The bruise was a reminder: Find Dad. He got up off the floor of the shower and began to clean himself. The dried blood melted off him and ran down the drain, he ran a hand through his hair, too tired to really wash it, and watched as his hand came away red. He put it under the water and watched that disappear too.

He turned the water off, the small room now filled with steam, and wrapped a towel around his waist, careful to avoid the claw marks and ripping his new staples. He wiped the fog off the mirror and looked at himself again. He looked how he felt- tired, worn, beat down. Gripping either side of the sink he leaned down and angled his head up so that he could look himself in the eyes.

“You’re Dean Winchester. You can handle anything,” he pushed himself back up and straightened his shoulders, “Handle this.”

1 PM  
Getting to Stanford was easy. Finding Sammy was easy. Getting him to come with him, that was hard. The last time his younger brother had seen him, their father told him that if he left for college, don’t come back. Dean had seen him since then, spending weekends looking at him on campus from the leather sets of Baby, hoping that he was as happy as he looked. But convincing Sam to help him look for their father was difficult, their fight had been explosive, violent -not if it was Dean, but for Sam and Dad it might as well have been 10 rounds in the ring. Their father told him not to come back and he never did.

Dean watched Sam leave a building on campus and followed him to the bus stop and then followed the bus he took to a small apartment building, it looked like it was primarily college kids and Sam unlocked the ground floor one and opened it, a young woman standing in the room on the other side of the door, reading a textbook. Dean watched as Sam bent down to kiss her forehead before closing the door behind him. Dean felt pride swell in his chest as he watched his little brother. College-educated, in a relationship, happy. He almost didn’t want to bother him with the life he left behind, but damn if Dean didn’t miss his brother. And if he was honest with himself, Sam was probably indispensable to finding Dad.

Dean waited until Sam headed out again, him and his girl dressed up for Halloween like little kids, and Dean laughed to himself, wincing slightly. The claw wounds had healed up nicely but the whole area was still tender, even after a couple weeks. Dean watched them until they were out of sight and then he finally parked and walked up to the front door of Sam’s apartment. Dean looked around for a second, noting the small ceramic frog lawn ornament on the ground by the door. He picked it up and snatched the key up from under it.

“Sloppy, Sam,” he whispered to himself with a chuckle.

He let himself in, walked around the apartment. It was nice. Lived in. It struck Dean how quickly Sam was able to fill up his life and make it normal. There were pictures of him and the girl, of him and groups of other people laughing. There was food in the fridge and books on the end table. It smelt like honey and cedar wood, obviously the perfume of the woman he was with. Dean’s chest felt tight. Sam had a home. Fuck if he didn’t want him to keep it, but he was selfish and their Dad was missing and he needed his brother again. He shrugged the feeling off, buried it so that he could focus on why he came for Sam. He opened the closet in the bedroom and saw the duffel bag Sam used to keep all his stuff in and Dean opened it to see his gun, salt, a book, and a knife, among a change of clothes and a toiletry bag. Still kept a go-bag, Dean thought to himself with a smile. He put it on the end of the bed, unlocked the window, and walked back outside to wait for their return, locking the front door as he left.

It was after midnight by the time Dean saw Sam and his girl come back. Dean checked the clock on Baby’s dash and decided to give them an hour before going in to get Sammy.

“Let’s see if you’re still good on your toes,” Dean said, laughing as he imagined the look on Sam’s face when he came to get him.

It was 1 in the morning when Dean opened the window he left unlocked and snuck inside the apartment. He slammed it back down, knowing that Sam would get up and check it out and he ducked behind the door to wait for him. Sure enough, Sam came in, his gun in hand, peering at the window. Dean knocked his gun hand back forcing him to drop the firearm and tackled him to the ground and Sam pinned him and pulled his fist back, before he looked at Dean.

“Dean?”

“Can’t your big brother come and say hi,” Dean gave him his best smile.

“Are you-”

Sam was cut off by his girl creeping into the room. “Sam? Is everything okay?”

Dean jumped up and nodded at her. “Hi, I’m Dean, “he introduced himself and turned to Sam, “She’s beautiful Sammy. I hope he’s treating you right,” he said to her.

“Dean! What are you doing here?” 

“Wait… Dean, like your brother Dean?”

“Yes. Jess, Dean. Dean, Jess.”

Jess smiled at Dean, a little unsure of him, and Dean gave her a grin back.

“Dean. What are you doing here?” Sam repeated, “Is everything alright?”

“Yeah. But, uh, Dad’s on a hunting trip. Hasn’t been home in a few weeks.”

Sam looked at him pointedly. “Dad’s always going off on hunting trips, what’s different about this?”

Dean sighed and held up the worn leather notebook he had carried with him. That he hadn’t let out of his sight since he realized his Dad left it and disappeared.

“He left this. His field book. Just a little worried- was hoping you might help me look for him.”

Sam looked back at Jess and she raised her eyebrows at him, clearly entertained by the family banter that had suddenly erupted in her home at one in the morning.

“I have an interview. On Monday, Dean, I can’t miss it.”

“I’ll have you back in plenty of time,” Dean promised.

“Go, Sam. Bev and I were gonna study all weekend anyway,” Jess said as she turned around, yawning.

Dean looked at Sam, sensing his win.

“Fine. You have to have me back Dean, or I swear-”

“Yeah, yeah I know, you’ll kill me.”

Dean pointedly didn’t watch as Sam kissed Jess goodbye and grabbed his bag.

“Nice to meet you Dean,” Jess said.

“You too.”

They were in Baby’s front seat before 1:30.

Sam sighed as he settled in the passenger seat. “Are you really worried?” he asked, a crease formed between his eyes.

Dean was worried, yeah. But he could protect Sam from most of that. 

“Yeah, but we’ll get him back in no time. Just needed some back up.”

“Well, where do we start?”

Dean held up their Dad’s notebook. “This should give us some ideas. Take a look, college boy.”

Sam scoffed and rolled his eyes, opening the book and reading as Dean drove.

There were a million things he wanted to ask Sam. How college was? How was Jess? What was he doing? Did he ever think about coming back? Did he ever miss Dad? Did he ever miss Dean? Did he plan on speaking to them ever again? But he said nothing. Sam didn’t need to be interrogated and he definitely didn’t need Dean’s neediness. And Dean did not want to talk about his feelings. Dean didn’t do feelings, the last thing he needed was his own emotions getting in the way of his life, or worse, a hunt. His Dad trained him better than that. Besides they had a job to do. Whatever Sam planned on doing with his life could wait. Dean had already waited four years, he could do a weekend more.

2 PM

The weekend didn’t get Dean any closer to finding Dad, put it did remind him how much he had missed Sam. He had forgotten that he was insane, really. Willing to just drive his car straight into an abandoned house to scare off a ghost. Dean loved it. He hated that Sam put Baby through the side of a house, but seeing that Sam was willing to do it, no hesitations, was like a drug straight through his veins. The ghost was easy, a nothing case in a lifetime of horrors, but it was the best in a while for Dean because Sammy was there to help him.

“I gotta get back Dean,” Sam said, chewing on his lip, “My interview’s in the morning.”

Dean sighed and put on a smile. “So law school, huh? That’s what you want?”

He hadn’t meant for it to come out as bitter as it did, but he could hardly help it. It felt like he was a chore that Sam was completing instead of the person who practically raised him. Dean didn’t want him to just disappear again. And maybe he was jealous of Sam’s normal. Dean shrugged it off, normal wasn’t in the cards for him.

“Dean. You told me you would get me back in time. I need to be there, I need the scholarship.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ll get you there, Sammy,” Dean said, forcing himself to laugh, and turning back towards the road so he could watch all the signs pass by.

He could feel Sam looking at him, studying something.

“That’s new,” he said after a few minutes pointing to the side of his neck, where Dean’s latest tattoo sat, “He give you that one too?”

Dean didn’t miss how anger slipped into Sam’s voice as he brought up their father, as it always did when their Dad was involved.

“I thought he was done marking us up,” he scoffed.

“It’s nothing Sam. Just a little extra help,” Dean answered, flashing a smile.

The tattoo that sat on his neck was supposedly designed to help against werewolves and their Dad had forced his head to the side and put him under the needle about a year and a half ago when he came back from a hunt with his arm in a sling. Dean didn’t have to ask, just sat still as he always did. Their dad had been giving them protective sigils for a decade.

Sam hated them. Dean didn’t mind the help. They started at both of their right shoulders and covered their biceps in a twist down to their elbows. When he had run out of space he started placing them at random all over their bodies. Despite his hate of them, Sam made the tattoos they both had look respectable, as if he was wearing a suit, or armor, like they were supposed to. Dean thought that on him they just looked obscene. Like the bathroom wall of a dirty club. Something about the ink next to his scars suggested a deplorable past to anyone that bothered to look at him. Dean pretended that he didn’t notice how mothers ushered their children past him when they got too close.

Not that Sam didn’t have scars. Dean knew he did, he’d stitched most of them up himself. Sam’s scars healed better than Dean’s because Dean would always take care of him first, paid close attention to how close the stitches were and made sure to disinfect and force Sam to clean them every two days. He would slap a couple stitches on if he really needed any and save the rest of the supplies for the next time Sam needed it and he taped up whatever stubborn cuts wouldn't stop bleeding and that was that. It was his own fault he looked like he did and he knew it, but Sam didn’t look as bad as Dean, so he didn’t let it bother him.

“You shouldn’t let him do that Dean! We’re not his property!”

“I know, Sam. He’s just trying to protect us,” Dean argued. He knew they would fight if Sam kept talking about it and he didn’t want to. Dean was good at putting water on the fire of his brother if he needed to. “Let’s just get you home, okay?” He said it stern, and Sam fell quiet, upset but not simmering like he was a moment before.

Dean looked at him and elbowed him, “So Jess… She seems nice.” 

Sam smiled and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, Dean, She’s nice.”

The rest of the drive back was in companionable silence and Sam fell asleep in the passenger seat about halfway through. Dean pulled up to the front of his apartment at 2:22 am, the lights in the place off. He looked at Sam sleeping and regretted having to wake him but grabbed his shoulder and shook it lightly to rouse him.

“Hey, you’re home. Said I’d have you back didn’t I?”

Sam smiled at him as he stretched and opened up the door. Dean got out and grabbed Sam’s bag from the trunk, carrying it in for him. Sam flicked the light to the front room on and crept into the bedroom, leaving Dean on the couch. Dean had his back turned to the bedroom when he heard Sam yell. Dean’s neck snapped up and he ran toward the sound, throwing the door to the bedroom wide open. He stopped in his tracks as he saw Sam, yelling Jess’s name over and over as he tried to reach towards her. Dean grabbed him out of instinct, shock flooded his system.

Jess was on fire, flat on her back on the ceiling, her eyes and mouth open, staring straight at them. It was like she was paralyzed. The fire surrounded her body and Dean saw as it started to burn through her skin, turning it red and molten in spots. It melted off her body and landed on the bed in wet globs. Sam reached out to her again and his hand was covered in her melted body. Dean yanked him backwards and dragged him out of the apartment, already calling 911 on his cell in his other hand. He shoved Sam onto the hood of Baby and held his shirt tight, knowing that as soon as he loosened his grip he was going to go barreling back into the bedroom.

“Sam! You can’t go back there! She’s gone, Sam. There’s nothing you can do!” Dean yelled over the fire, now spread out from the bedroom, Dean could see it in the window by the front door.

“Dean, I can’t- I can’t lose her. I have to check, Dean!” Sam’s voice was frantic, desperate and Dean’s chest clenched hard as he told him no. Sam knew she was dead as soon as she was there burning on the ceiling just as well as Dean did. Just like their mom, burned the same way. But Sam was only a baby when their mother caught fire, Dean remembered. He felt four years old again. Dean told himself, Sam was the one losing something here, not him. He pulled him back away from the spreading fire to wait for the fire department to arrive and forced himself to take in a lungful of air. Calm down, Mom’s death was over two decades ago. But whatever killed Jess, killed their Mom too. Dean tried not to feel the tinge of excitement he got when he thought about how this might get them one step closer to killing whatever it was that killed their Mom.

3 PM  
Sam didn’t go back to Stanford. As soon as the fire department cleared them to go in, Sam grabbed whatever wasn’t damaged and shoved them into a bag, handed the key back to the landlord, and withdrew from his classes. Not that it wasn’t exactly what Dean wanted, but he didn’t want it like this. Sam was quiet, strung tight, having nightmares. Nothing new, but it was amplified. Every other night Dean was listening to him scream and mutter to himself about a fire and demons and Jess. Dean hated that there was nothing to do besides look for the demon that killed Jess and their Mom. Maybe then Sam would stop tossing and turning.

They didn’t have a plan, and their Dad’s notebook was only marginally helpful in figuring out where he had gone, so they were on their own. For the first month or so they stopped in a few towns, solving cases, nothing exciting or different from their whole lives. Sam falls back into the rhythm easy, like he had never stopped hunting. They spend endless hours driving, watching the streetlight reflect off wet pavement, staying motel after motel. The motels are what drove Sam mad. Drove Dean mad too, but he was far past complaining, too used to them to understand how much they bothered him.

Sam got twitchy. Shook his hand by his side and made tight fists until his knuckles turned white. He would pace and huff out his breath with force, like he was trying to get away from his own air. Some nights he would leave without telling Dean where he was going. Dean knew anyway, couldn’t help the way his eyes rolled. There were always churches close to motels, why Dean didn’t know, but Sam would sit in them and stare at the stained glass of the windows. When they were teenagers Dean asked him why he’d rather sit in a church than a motel and Sam told him “churches look the same too but they feel different. All motels are absent from space.” Dean didn’t know what the Hell he was talking about but he could tell that it was something Sam needed so he never mentioned it again.

Dean’s concern hit a new level when Sam started showing up with his pointer and middle fingertips burned after he came back. Sam tried to hide them, shoved his hands into the pockets of his hoodie but after the third time Dean noticed, he couldn’t hold it in anymore.

“Are you just going to pretend like I can’t see it?” he asked him, rolling his shoulders back to remind Sam that he’s in charge.

“Leave it Dean,” was the only answer Sam gave, voice tight. He barely looked at him when he said it.

“How am I supposed to leave it Sam? What are you doing? And don’t say you’re going to church because I know damn well, you’re not burning your fingers by praying!”

Sam looked at him with a glint in his eyes and Dean knew he wasn’t going down easy, that Sam was going to bait him into a fight because he could. “Church.”

“Sam.”

“I said leave it.”

“And I said it no!”

Sam threw the first punch for the first time in his life. Dean was so caught off guard that Sam managed to hit him square in the jaw with a sickening crack. Dean swung back but Sam was ready and dodged most of his hit, only just getting half of it on his ear. Sam pulled back to hit him again and Dean punched him in his stomach before he got the chance, forcing Sam to keel over and Dean guided him down to sit on the edge of his bed.

“What? I’m just supposed to do what you tell me because you told me to do it? You sound like Dad.”

“You’re supposed to tell me so that I can help you!”

Sam deflated, curling in on himself. Dean lowered his voice.

“Y’know I hear you, right? You’ve been having nightmares every other day, you barely eat, you look for a fight every chance you can find. I’ll let you hit me if it’ll make you feel better Sam, but just. Tell me.”

When Sam looks up at Dean his eyes are bloodshot. “I knew Jess was going to die.”

And that’s how Dean found out about the visions. Sam tells him that he’s been having them for months and they’d been getting worse and worse. 

“My fingers. They… “ Sam trailed off, looking to the side.

“Yeah?”

“I think it’s the holy water.”

Dean looked at him for a moment. The holy water in the basin of the church. The water that Sam used his first two fingers to bless himself everytime he walked into a church. The holy water they kept around in case they ever ran into a demon. Dean didn’t want to think about that for too long.

“I’ve been trying to find out why for months. I don’t know why it’s happening.”

“You could’ve called me. I would have helped, Sammy.”

Sam looked at him, flexing his jaw. “Why would I? Dad told me not to come back. I planned on listening to him.”

“Oh that’s when you planned on listening to him?” Dean laughed,the humor absent from his voice.

Sam just stared at his burned fingertips. Dean felt out of depths and then he felt frustrated that he felt out of depths. His father trained him better than that.

“Maybe we should talk to Bobby,” Dean said.

“We have to find Dad first. We aren’t any closer to finding him and we have no clue where the thing that killed Mom and Jess are and he’s the only person that can help. I’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” Dean agreed, “But no more holy water.”

“Oh and uh… I can’t really eat salt anymore either.”

Dean’s eyes widened as he stared at his brother.

“Yeah, it uh, it burns my throat. I spit up blood the last time I had french fries.”

Sam smiled sheepishly at him. Dean just nodded his head and Sam went into the bathroom to shower. As much as Dean wanted to put a halt on everything until he knew Sam was okay, he also knew that Sam was right. Their Dad was the only person he knew that could help them find this demon and that was always, always priority number one. Find the demon that killed Mom. It’s the only reason they started hunting anyway. But Sam developing whatever demon-sickness this was only served to freak Dean out. If there was one thing that was constant in his life was that whiskey was better on the rocks, music sounded better in Baby, and that Sam was good.

4 PM  
Served him fucking right, Dean thought, as he laid on a hospital bed. They could’ve been anywhere. Hospitals and motels had that in common. The doctor told him he didn’t have a lot of time, his heart was shot, and that he was going to die. Soon.

Sam had asked a million questions and while Dean pulled all the needles out from under his skin, dropping the IV drip onto the floor and grabbing his clothes from the chair next to the bed. No point in spending his last month in a hospital. It didn’t even matter how it happened, some unlucky hunting accident, and now Dean was going to die and there was nothing he could do. He tried not to feel relieved.

Dean recognized Sam’s panic, his desperation. It had been visible more and more lately, getting worse the more time had crawled by since that night with Jess. Dean’s imminent death seemed to kick it into high gear. Sam spent 8, 10, 12 hours without sleeping or eating, just pouring over a thousand different articles and books on lore to find something to save him. He called contacts written in their dad’s notebook and looked up healers. Dean had to yell at him to go to bed, eat his “fucking salad”, which of course, lead to another argument.

“I’m not gonna stop just because you don’t give a shit if you live or die!”

“You’ve been up for 24 hours without eating Sam! How hard would it be to just sleep for an hour and eat your lunch!”

“We don’t even know how much time you have left. You look like shit.”

Dean couldn’t argue there. His skin was pallid, the bags under his eyes reached a new shade of deep purple and his own appetite was non-existent. He felt like shit too.

“Besides,” Sam added, “it’s not like you're helping me.”

Dean sighed. He hadn’t been helping, if he was dying he didn’t want to spend his last moments bent over some ancient book trying to find a witch that could give him a new heart, or whatever it was Sam was looking for. Dean wanted to argue but he thought that this might be one of the last things he could give Sammy, so he just shoved Sam’s lunch at him and opened a book, pointedly looking at his brother. Sam opened the container and shoved a forkful of lettuce in his mouth. Dean shuddered in disgust. Can’t eat salt, he thought to himself in horror. He’d rather deal with his shitty heart than give up burgers. Poor kid.

\-------------

Sam found a healer. Some preacher that claimed to be able to heal anyone that “God chose.”  
Dean rolled his eyes when they rolled up to a tent in a muddy field on Sunday morning. They had driven to the town he lived in and booked a motel room. Dean had complained the whole time.

It pissed him off when it worked. He knew he should be grateful for the time, to be able to look for his Dad, to take care of Sam, to avenge his Mom. He felt tired instead. Sam was smug with it, smirked at Dean when the reverend actually healed him. He took Dean straight to the local hospital after to run tests on his heart and every single one came back clean. It didn’t sit right with Dean.

When they got back to the motel he sat in Baby smoking cigarette after cigarette until half the pack was gone and his fingers were numb. He licked his lips and tasted ash. Dean hated himself as he admitted to himself that he didn’t want to spend another fucking day in this body, let alone a lifetime. He pinched the bridge of his nose, turned on Baby, and went to get Sam lunch. He still wasn’t hungry.

It had taken a lot of convincing to get Sam to look into it, but he caved, and they met with the preacher and his wife in their home. It was easy to sneak back in later and go through their stuff and sure enough the wife was practicing all kinds of magic, getting Death to trade lives for her. The one she traded for Dean’s was a teacher’s: openly gay and had just won a lawsuit. He wasn’t holy enough for her and he died so that Dean could live. He felt nauseous.

There was no way she could know, he told himself. Unless she just looked at him and could sense it, like a lingering smell stuck to his clothes and on his skin. Something he couldn’t wash off. Dean shoved it down, down, down. Told himself there was nothing to know. Forced himself to forget that night he had drunk so much he got to his knees in the alleyway behind the bar, weight heavy on his tongue. He should’ve forgotten it anyway. He drank so much the week after that night it was a miracle he remembered his name. That wasn’t him. There was nothing to know.

When he went after the woman he had no intention of killing her, but she set Death on him again and named him wicked. He killed the wife. There was nothing to know.

5 PM  
They weren’t any closer to finding their father. Sam had been disappearing more and more dipping in and out of every church they passed. When the visions started while he was awake Dean knew things were about to get bad. Sam bent over in pain, his hand to his head while they were walking, driving, eating lunch. He could barely keep from screaming. Dean had no solutions, he could name every creature in the world, what killed them, and what they did, but he didn’t know a damn thing that would help his brother.

They were in the motel one night when the bleeding started. It trickled down, out of his nose at first. They thought it was a nosebleed- just stress. But then it flooded out of his eyes and his ears, Sam spit into the sink only to see his tongue bleeding from every taste bud. Dean grabbed a towel and held it to his brother’s face, eyes darting around the room for anything that could help. But there was nothing in their first aid kit that could help with spontaneous bleeding caused by psychic visions. Dean swore loudly.

They wound up having to hope up at the motel for a week, Sam alternating between sitting in the church down the road and laying down on his bed a towel folded up under his head, blood flowing out of every orifice. It made him light headed, the loss of blood, and Dean thanked whatever the hell was out there for them being the same blood type. It was easy enough to get to a hospital and steal what he needed, impersonating a janitor to get into the supply closet, taking needles and blood drawing kits, gauze and swiping a bottle of painkillers from the counter as he walked past. He had to give Sam four transfusions. He nicked his own vein on the third one. It was angry and swollen from the amount of blood Dean had taken from it and it spurted onto the wall in an arch. Dean had to scramble to tape some gauze to it and clean up the wall before switching arms, having to do the whole process with his left hand.

Sam had tried to protest but could barely get a word out before more blood fogged his eyesight, fading the world out into shades of red. Dean lifted his arm and stuck a needle in, taped the bag of his blood up on the headboard of Sam’s bed so that it could flow down the tube and into his arm. 

He left Sam alone only long enough to get food, opting for a drive thru instead of having to wait for actual food to be cooked. He wished they had an actual house so that he could cook something for Sam that would make him feel better instead of having to stop at random restaurants for food without any salt because of his brother’s illness. He shoved his own food into his mouth without much thought and ran back inside the motel room. Sam hadn’t moved. His eyes were closed and the blood had dissipated to a small trickle. He was curled up on his side, his arms wrapped around his stomach, a small crease in between his eyes from what Dean assumed was the pain. He looked young.

Dean sat on the edge of his bed holding a container of soup.

“Hey. Food’s here. Gotta get something in you.”

Sam stirred, rolling his muscles and flinching slightly as he unwound his body. Dean helped him move into a sitting position, he ignored the way Sam’s hands shook as he put pressure on them.

He didn’t want to tell Sam he was scared. Terrified. He hated that he couldn't control what was happening to him and that he couldn’t help in any way that mattered. He was scared that this meant Sam was turning into something he had to hunt. His father told him two things over and over and over: hunt monsters, protect Sam. What if Sam became a monster? Dean loathed the thought, fucking hated himself for allowing it to enter his mind, but the uncertainty he was beginning to feel towards Sam came in waves. He would always protect him, but god he didn’t want him to turn into something unholy, he didn’t want his brother to be hunted. He’d kill every hunter they met if he had to.

He fed him himself, carefully bringing spoonfuls to his mouth, knowing damn well Sam would yell at him for babying him if he didn’t feel like complete shit. He managed to get down half the container and Dean helped him up to get in the shower. Blood had gotten into his hair and stained his clothes and the feeling of dried blood made your skin itch. Dean knew. He waited outside the bathroom, listening for any suspicious thud that would indicate Sam falling down. When Sam was done he wrapped a towel around his waist and Dean held out sweats for him to put on, worried about him catching a chill on top of whatever this was.

Sam laid back down after he changed and Dean fell asleep in the other bed, giving in the exhaustion. He hadn’t really slept since the first night Sam was bleeding. He gave him a final look before turning over and settling into the stiff blankets of the motel.

When Dean woke up Sam was gone. Panic wouldn’t have been Dean’s first instinct but the state Sam had been in the night before got him there fast. He shouted out for him as if he could be hiding in the small motel room. He walked across the carpet to look out the window. When Sam wasn’t there Dean pulled whatever clothes he could grab easiest and threw them on, grabbed the keys to Baby and unlocked the driver’s side door. Just as Dean was turning on the car he saw Sam walking across the parking lot, hood up, hands in his pockets. The relief felt like a drug. And the anger felt righteous.

Dean got out of the car and opened the door for him, staring at him, jaw set.  
“Where the fuck were you, Sammy? I was worried sick, you could’ve dropped dead in the middle of the road and I wouldn’t even know about it!”

“I was at church,” Sam said, sitting on his bed and staring at the floor, the hood of his sweatshirt covering his face.

“The fuck are you going there for? They have an answer to your little problem,” he said gesturing to Sam’s face.

“No. They don’t.” Sam looked at Dean, letting him see his face. Thick, tar-like blood covered his chin and had dripped onto his shirt. When he spoke, Dean could see Sam’s teeth coated in a layer of the stuff. Dean couldn’t even think of it as blood, it was so dark and gooey. “Started tasting something weird when I was sitting in the pew. I was just saying a hail mary… I uh, I started to whisper the words I guess. I didn’t even realize I was doing it. Nearly choked on it. My throat feels like it was covered in molasses.”

Dean couldn’t explain why it made him so angry, fury licked at his spine.

“I told you to stop going there! What does it do for you huh? There's nothing out there- we’re hunters we would know! And it’s obviously not good for you!”

Sam was pale but his voice was strong.

“You can’t lock me up and put me on a leash so I don’t do what you don’t want, Dean. What I get from it is none of your fucking business but maybe I need something to hold on to. You took me away from my normal, my home, my friends. Jess died because of some demon that’s been stalking us since birth. And the fact that I can’t go to church without burning or bleeding is all the proof I need that there is something out there. Maybe you can’t go in one either.”

Sam wasn’t Dean. When he got angry his voice was steady, calm, quiet. He didn’t rage, he just took control that was never given to him. Dean was the one who was explosive. He went outside and smoked the rest of his cigarettes in Baby, the engine idling, music blaring. Before the church incident, the bleeding had slowed down and they’d probably have to start moving again soon. Dean reminded himself to lift extra first aid supplies and to steal the motel towels in case it got bad again in the car. He still felt pissed but it was secondary, taking care of Sam was always his primary emotion. He could yell at him when he felt better.

6 PM  
Dean didn’t expect to see their Dad so soon. He knew he had been looking for him, had dragged Sammy back to this life so that he could help him find him but looking at him again after months apart shocked him.

Sam and him had been working a case and he just strolled back into their lives like he never left. Dean and a million questions and Sam immediately started in on him, starting a new argument that could’ve been any fight that the two of them had in the past two decades. Their Dad shut them both down, reminded them they had a case to work, the death of his mentor, apparently. Dean didn’t even know he had a mentor.

He said “yes sir” throughout the whole case, didn’t argue, didn’t complain. His family was together again, doing what they always did. Nothing else mattered. The case ended easy enough.

He told them he knew what killed their mother. What killed Jess. And he told them that they could finally get it and kill it for good. Dean knew it was important; this is what he’d been trained for his whole life, but it felt hollow. He spent most of the time their father was explaining to them what they had to do gazing at Sam. He looked determined, angry, Dean looked across at their father and saw mirror of him. Sam was more like him than he’d ever be. It was both a relief and a wound. 

Being around their Dad was easy for Dean. All he had to do was listen and follow orders and execute them well; he had gotten used to that in the last four years. Everything on autopilot- Dad knew best- even if it didn’t feel like he did. But now with Sammy back Dean remembered all the other roles he had to balance something fierce: mediator, brother, son, mother, hunter, bait, breadwinner. He never stopped being all those things but he felt them less when it was just the two of them. Dad could handle himself. Sam was someone he had to protect, to keep sheltered and fed.

They were supposed to stop the yellow-eyed demon in Salvation, Iowa. Fitting. But things got in the way and plans were changed and they split up, their Dad one way and them in the other. It made Dean feel like he was 13 again, Dad gone for who knows how long, left to fend for himself and Sammy. He didn’t expect to have to save their Dad though.

Things went south where he was and the same demon that he had been hunting for as long as Dean could remember possessed the man that so desperately wanted his death. Dean was looking at his father’s face, his eyes yellow, a cruel grin on his face.

The past few days had happened so fast Dean couldn’t remember them, every thought in his mind consumed what was in front of his face. His father grabbed the front of his shirt with both hands and pushed him backwards to the wall of the cabin. He pinned him there with a forearm and grabbed his throat. He felt the sharp tip of a knife against his lower abdomen. The only way out was to hit his father, serving as a vessel for what killed his mother. Dean rifled through every lesson he’d been taught, every order, every instruction. He had never been trained for this, he couldn’t hit his father. He could die, he could let his father kill him, he thought, it’d just be another order. As his vision blurred he thought about Sam, about someone having to protect him. He was face down on the floor gasping for air before he knew what happened. His vision was still watery as he looked up to see Sam fighting their father, every move that their Dad taught them one being used against him. Sam had him pinned to the floor in under a minute. The last thing Dean heard before he passed out was their father asking Sam to kill him, in his voice, not the demon’s.

“I can only hold him here for so long Sam. Just do it!”

Dean’s vision faded to black.

7 PM  
Dean woke up in a hospital outside of his body. He watched doctors come in and out of his room, reading charts and taking blood. He saw Sam sitting by his bedside, heard him talking to his body.

“I didn’t know what to do, Dean. I- I just felt so angry, y’know? At everything? I didn’t- Fuck, I didn’t know what to do. Please wake up, Dean. Please.”

It was like that for days. He tried to answer Sam, but he couldn’t hear him. Sam’s hands shook when he talked to him, the bags under his eyes were dark. Dean didn’t have to look around to know what he did. He just had to wake up. He was already feeling his grief and his anger and his desperation. What could he do now, without his father to give him orders? Without the demon to hunt? The only thing left was to make sure Sam was safe and taken care of. He had to wake up.

The stab wound went deep, and it aggravated his pancreas causing “acute pancreatitis” that was proving dificult to control because of the wound. He heard one doctor say they weren’t sure of he would make it, said the only option left was another surgery. He watched them perform it. He tuned out the comments about his scars and his tattoos, and watched them reach under his stomach, careful around the stitches from his first surgery to cut out the damaged part of his pancreas that was nicked by the knife. The knife had been long, it went straight through his skin and his stomach and got halfway through his pancreas before Sam stepped in. The first surgery had reconstructed and stopped the bleeding from his stomach, this surgery was meant to cut out the damaged part of his pancreas, hoping that would control the swelling causing the pancreatitis. Dean felt calm out of his own body, it felt like taking a break from the constant mess of making the wrong decisions. It was strange, sure, but the definition of strange became mangled in his life. This was just another day, but he felt closer to the ghosts he hunted than to the body on the table. He heard the surgeons throw around words like “smoker”, “chronic exhaustion”, “alcoholic”. Dean rolled his eyes. He spent a lifetime on motel beds. If he wanted to smoke and drink, he was going to. It’s the only thing he did for himself, but he knew Sam was going to be a pain in the ass about it if he woke up.

The surgery took a few hours. He wandered in and out of the operating room a few times, but he couldn’t sit and watch Sam pace in the waiting room for long before he started feeling his anxiety as his own. The doctors were less stressful to Dean’s surprise. He was just another patient to them. 

They rolled him back into his room, Sam dogging the doctor’s every step, asking a million questions in the short trip from the OR. Dean followed behind, ignoring all the medical terms he heard, not bothered to know what a “resection” was, just hoping that it would get him back in his body instead of following it around. When the doctor said that it could take weeks to recover, that got Dean’s attention. They didn’t have weeks. Sam was still bleeding out of his face every other week and his visions were getting worse, happening during the day instead of just at night. Dean felt his throat constrict as he reminded himself that they had to bury their Dad. That the hunt that they spent their whole lives on was over. No more avenging their Mom. Dean tried to keep his panic at bay, he didn’t want to focus too hard on the fact that he didn’t have orders to fall back on.

The doctors left his room and Sam sat next to him. He looked fucking awful. Dean wished he could yell at him to go, get some sleep, eat something. He obviously wasn’t going anywhere. Even if he could yell at him, he wouldn’t listen. He knew Sam would never leave him there, even though Sam was supposed to listen to Dean. He started to talk to him in a half whisper, his voice raspy.

“I can’t sleep. I tried one night, to uh, go to a motel but as soon as I got there all I could think about was you dying and the-. The cabin,” he shuddered, Dean heard his voice shake, “I know you’re gonna kill me when you wake up. You wouldn’t do it and I did. Hell, I barely thought about it. I just thought about Jess. And Mom. And I thought about you, too. You would kill me if you knew I knew, but we never had any privacy growing up. Motels only have one room,” he forced out a laugh and Dean felt his heart beat start to flutter, “You didn’t get into fights that much as a kid. One night I saw him. Saw what he did to you when he was half in the bag, leaning against the walls because he couldn’t walk on his own. He broke your nose. I remember how the blood smelled, I still have nightmares about that. And all of a sudden it made sense to me. You were 19. Sometimes I can’t believe how long you kept it from me, how drunk he got. I thought you just picked fights because you could and I- I hated you for it for a long time. Can’t believe how naive I was. And I know you’ll miss him and hate me when you wake up-even if I don’t understand it-, but you took that from me for a long, long time, Dean. So I can take it from you. Just wake up.”

Dean watched Sam get up and walk into the hallway, his eyes teary. For the first time in his life Dean felt horror straight down to his bones. Sam was not supposed to know. Dean never even said anything to his father, just hoped that he was always drunk enough to not remember and careless enough to believe every story Dean told about his fighting habits. It was unspoken, nothing Dean couldn’t take. It was Dean’s burden and he took it so Sam wouldn’t have to walk around half bent over from the weight. And now he had something much heavier to carry because of Dean. If he had hidden it better, if he was more convincing, maybe Sam wouldn’t have pulled a gun on their father. Dean couldn’t tell if it was a good thing or a bad thing that he wasn’t. He’s not sure that either of them would’ve survived disobeying an order like that. He just wished he could’ve shouldered it for Sam. He didn’t want him walking around in the world with a secret so huge, one that it felt like everyone could see but no one could understand why. Dean saw his heart rate monitor beep faster and faster and finally give out a flat line across the screen. He felt death in his fingertips.

It was hard to focus after that, everything became hazy, like looking at the world through a dirty window. He was certain he felt cold, heard Sam’s voice, smelled an antibacterial cream. Then there was electricity, hard shocks down the length of his body, jolting him around the bed. 

The blackness was heavy. It felt thick around Dean’s fingers, soft like wool. It wrapped around him like water, rocked him like a wave. Every ache Dean had ever felt dulled. It was euphoric. Then he felt a vice grip around his wrist and a burn on the skin of his chest and life came back around him in a too bright rush.

It was Sam’s hand bruising his wrist, pushed away by the nurses but close enough to cling to Dean. Dean was back in his body. He knew because the pain was everywhere. It clung to him like a straitjacket. A thousand different pains for every mistake he made in his body. Burns from the paddles on his chest forcing him back to life, a sharp surgical ache in his abdomen, a faint bruise around his throat, a dull throb in his joints, a pounding in his head. All Dean could hear was his heartbeat and he looked around frantically for Sam’s familiar face, wanting to just be out of this place, to go to the familiar uncomfortable-ness of a shitty motel and a drink. He wanted to sit behind the wheel of Baby and smoke a cigarette. 

Dean sat through what felt like hours of doctors explaining things to him, zoned out, watching the IV drip into his arm. 

“How long until I can leave?”

The doctor paused his speech and looked at him with his eyebrows raised. “You’ve had a major accident and a major surgery, were unconscious for a week and a half, and flatlined. You have to stay for at least a week. I can’t, in good conscience, let you go any sooner. You could slide right back in a health crisis.”

Dean took in the white walls and the acidic smell, Sam’s face and the doctor’s word and said, “I can sign something right? That doesn’t make you liable if I leave?”

The doctor sighed, “Yes. There are release papers.”

He barely had a foot out of the room before Sam started protesting but Dean couldn’t pay attention to him either. His brain felt over worked, he could barely remember why he was there in the first place beyond the pain. He looked up at Sam and tried to listen to his words but could only hear the cadence of his voice. He heard him slow down and stop talking altogether. 

“Okay, Dean. I’ll get you out.”

Dean believed him.

8 PM  
It was late when they got to Bobby’s. Dean had heard Sam on the phone with him as soon as they got in the parking lot of the hospital, Sam walking behind Dean as a precaution, the latter still wobbly on his legs. Sam climbed into Baby’s driver seat and Dean sprawled out in the backseat. He could count on one hand how many times he let Sam drive Baby, but he could barely protest as Sam opened the back door for him, balling up his sweatshirt and placing it under Dean’s head. Dean felt struck by an overwhelming sense of deja vu in reverse. He remembered placing Sam in the backseat, his arm broken, and balling up an old sweater so he could lay down. Dean was only 17 at the time, but that was old enough to drive and he went straight to the hospital, ignoring their father’s general rule to avoid them.

He floated in and out of consciousness the whole drive and by the time the familiar cabin came into view the sun was dipping over the horizon. Dean dimly registered Bobby helping him out of the car, heard bits of him and Sam talking- “They let him leave like this?” “I had to get him out Bobby, I just…” He heard Sam sigh.  
He half walked, half leaned on Bobby and Sam to get into Bobby’s spare room. The mattress was worn and smelt like cedarwood and laundry detergent and it reminded Dean of being a kid left in Bobby’s care for weeks on end. He was asleep before his head hit the pillow.

\--------------

Sam’s leg was bouncing a million miles an hour, a frantic movement designed to keep his excess of bad energy at bay. Bobby handed him a mug and sat down across from him. He reached a hand across the space between them and placed it on Sam’s leg, stilling it. 

“What happened, son?”

Words tumbled out of his mouth in a rush, he felt guilt and anger in his throat, shame in his tongue, and a fierce conviction of doing what was right in his clenched jaw. He felt his panic in his feet, always one more shitty thing away from running and he felt his stress in his shoulders at the knot at the base of his neck. He remembered how Jess used to kiss that same spot. His eyes watered and he let the tears run down his cheeks before wiping them away. When he was done telling Bobby what he did, what happened, he couldn’t look up. He didn’t want to face him. How could he kill his own father? How could he not? 

Bobby listened all the way through, didn’t stop him once, only handed him a tissue when his eyes started to water. He leaned back and took a deep breath before speaking.

“Well that’s a whole lotta shit you’ve had to deal with… Sam, I can’t make you feel better about it but I can tell you I don’t blame you. You did what you thought was best- I wou;d’ve done the same as you. And Dean, well, that boy raised you. I doubt there’s a thing you could do that he won’t forgive you for,” Bobby’s voice was gentle and it soothed something deep in Sam’s soul.

“And uh, not for nothing, but I’ve thought about shooting your Dad even when there wasn’t a murdering demon possessing him, so…” Bobby trailed off. He squeezed Sam’s shoulder as he walked past him, into the kitchen. Sam heard pots clang together and the fridge open as Bobby started in on dinner.

\---------------------

Dean heard the end of Sam’s conversation with Bobby. He listened carefully as he laid on the bed and his heart broke as he heard Sam cry, as he realized again that his father was dead. Bobby was right though. He had already raged at Sam, consoled him, and forgiven him in his mind. There was no way to go but forward no matter how hard he wanted to be told what to do and how to do it. He was good at taking orders, and he wasn’t sure he was that good at anything else.

Sam knocked on the door and nodded at Dean as he walked in.

“Feeling any better?”

“Feel like they just took a piece of my pancreas out,” Dean said, huffing out a laugh.

Sam forced himself to laugh too and sat on the edge of Dean’s bed.

“Listen Dean I have to tell you something,” Dean watched as Sam gathered himself, already knowing what he was about to say, “Dean, Dad’s- he’s… Dean, Dad’s dead.”

Sam said it on an exhale, his voice a whisper. Sam stared at the floor, his leg bouncing. Dean waited for him to finish. 

“I killed him. And the demon.”

Dean watched Sam’s knuckles turn white as he grabbed the edge of the bed, his shoulders bunched up by his ears, and his face hidden. Despite knowing, Dean felt every emotion roll in him, his grief and anger and incompetence, his anxiety and worthlessness, his worry. His shame. Worst of all he felt his relief again, a wave of it strong and pushing, insisting that he feel it no matter how hard he tried to shove it down.

Dean pushed himself up to a sitting position, slow and with a hand over the stitches on his stomach. He reached out to wrap his other hand around Sammy’s forearm and pulled him forward so that he would look at him.

“I know,” he said it with as much conviction as he could muster, tried to be kind when he said it, but kindness was something that he thought was unnatural to him. It was something for Sam.

Sam’s mouth opened and closed like he wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words to say it.

“I heard you in the hospital, watched you actually…” Dean explained, trying to make sense of it himself, everything still murky in his drug addled brain. “It’s okay, Sam. You’ll be okay.” 

“What about you?”

“I’ll be just fine too, Sammy,” he laid back down, hand still on his stomach, “I always am.”


End file.
